The Law of Nines Page 10

  When he spotted flashing lights in the rearview mirror he pulled over. An ambulance raced past. He suddenly felt guilty worrying about mere paintings and hoped no one was hurt in a fire. He couldn’t imagine the horror of being burned.

  His heart in his throat, Alex pulled around the corner, accelerating up the street, past houses with lights all on and people standing out in their yards looking toward the blaze.

  With a jolt, he realized that it was his grandfather’s house that was burning.

  Alex slammed on the brakes as he pulled to the side of the street and parked crookedly at the curb. Cars with onlookers had parked to watch.

  Fire trucks crowded the street, all parked at cockeyed angles. Amber lights on the fire trucks strobed the night. A police car, blue lights flashing, was parked crossways, blocking traffic.

  Alex set the brake and leaped out. He ran with all his strength toward his grandfather’s house. His vision narrowed down until all he saw was the familiar home engulfed in a terrifying glow of yellow and orange flames. He didn’t even see all the firefighters in heavy yellow coats and helmets striped with reflective tape. Panic powered his legs as he ran.

  An arm suddenly hooked him around the middle, spinning him around, stopping him cold. He pushed at the arms that came around and encircled him.

  “Let me go! It’s my grandfather’s house! Let me go!”

  “Hold on there,” a big cop said. “You can’t get any closer.”

  “I have to! We have to get him out!”

  Two firemen stepped in around him.

  “He’s already out, son,” the older man said.

  Alex stared at him. “He is?” He looked around as the cop finally released him. “Where is he?”

  The senior fireman put an arm around Alex’s shoulders and walked him toward one of the two ambulances. All the flashing lights up and down the street made the scene seem surreal, otherworldly. One red-and-white ambulance was parked, all its doors closed. The back doors of the other were spread wide. Paramedics stood around, not looking at all in a hurry.

  Even at a distance the heat was so intense that it hurt the side of Alex’s face. Acrid smoke burned his throat. Hoses snaked all over the street. Streamers of water arced off into the furnace of flame. It was easy to see that there was shortly going to be nothing left of his grandfather’s house.

  As they got closer, Alex saw a gurney with the slight form of what might have been a body entirely covered in a gray blanket. Two paramedics stood over it on the far side.

  “I’m sorry,” the man holding Alex’s shoulders said as they approached. “He was long gone when we got in there.”

  Alex stood staring at the gurney. He ran the words through his mind again, and then again. They didn’t seem real.

  “He’s dead? Ben is dead?”

  “I’m afraid so. From the looks of it, the fire started downstairs in a workshop. That’s where we found the gentleman. One of my men looked in the basement door and spotted him reflected in a mirror. He was on the floor not far to the side. There wasn’t much left of him by then but we were at least able to use the hoses to cool the doorway enough to manage to recover his remains. I’m sorry, son.”

  “I’m his only family,” Alex said in a distant voice, somehow feeling that it all couldn’t be real. “The only family left. I always told him to be careful with torches and soldering irons down there.”

  “It very well may be that he passed on from a heart attack or stroke and then something hot left unattended started the fire. I’ve seen it happen that way with older people.”

  “But he was burned?”

  “I’m afraid so, but it’s very possible that it was after he was already gone. We don’t know yet.”

  “Ben,” Alex said in a tearful voice as he knelt beside the remains covered in a gray blanket, “please don’t leave me like this. I need you so much right now.”

  It felt like the world was falling in on him.

  Some of the rafters gave way and the entire roof came crashing down. Huge flames roared up into the air. Columns of sparks and billowing smoke lifted into the night sky.

  Alex laid an arm over his grandfather and broke down in tears.

  13.

  THE CORONER’S OFFICE HAD BENN unable to determine the actual cause of death. They said that the remains were too badly burned to make that determination, but that since he had been found on the floor down in his workshop, rather than in bed, it was improbable that Alex’s grandfather had been overcome by smoke in his sleep. The fire extinguisher, hanging nearby on the foundation wall, was charged and in working order, but it hadn’t been used. There was an exit door not far away.

  Considering those factors and the lack of any evidence to the contrary, the coroner’s finding was that Benjamin Rahl had most likely lost consciousness or died of natural causes before the fire started, and the fire had been the result of something hot left unattended at his workbench while he was either unconscious or already deceased.

  Alex had his grandfather’s remains cremated. Ben had always said that he didn’t want his corpse rotting in the ground, that he’d rather have the clean purification of fire consume his worldly self.

  Still, considering what had happened, having Ben cremated seemed insensitive. Alex knew, though, that it was what his grandfather had wanted.

  But more than that, Ben, who Ben was, was gone. The remains were not Ben, not to Alex, anyway. Those remains had been released by the fire to return to the elements of the universe.

  The house was gone as well. Even much of the foundation had collapsed and what hadn’t was unstable, leaving a hazardous sight. After the fire marshal and the insurance company adjuster finished their investigation, they had turned the property over to Alex. At the city’s insistence Alex had hired a company to haul away the debris and fill in the hole.

  Since then, whenever he walked up the street to his grandfather’s place, the journey felt dreamlike. Even standing there staring at the open gap in the neighborhood, at the smoothed-over lot, he couldn’t believe it. His mind filled in the empty hole with a ghostlike memory of the home. It seemed impossible that it was all gone—both his grandfather and the house where Alex had been raised for the last half of his childhood.

  In the weeks that followed, that wasn’t all that felt dreamlike. Alex at times wondered if it was possible that he had imagined Jax.

  In the beginning, under the choking weight of grief, he hadn’t thought a lot about her. He lost himself in the routine of his daily workouts. All he could really think about was Ben. He had real issues to deal with and there was no one else to handle things, no one else to help him.

  But over time, nagging thoughts of Jax returned. With his mother in a mental institution it was only too easy to imagine that he was falling prey to the same sort of delusional madness that had overcome her. It sometimes felt like that madness was lurking just out of sight, ready to smother him, too.

  He tried hard to keep such fears in perspective, tried hard not to give them any power over him, tried hard not to let his imagination get the best of him. Yes, his mother was sick, but that didn’t mean that the same thing would happen to him.

  His mother hadn’t spoken since his birthday, when she had told him to run and hide, when she had warned him about a different kind of human who broke people’s necks. He worried at times that he’d somehow built upon his mother’s strange words to come up with Jax and her story—created a delusion of his own.

  On one hand he knew that it wasn’t possible that he could have imagined Jax, but on the other hand it often seemed easier to believe that he had dreamed her up, much the way he did the scenes he loved painting. He knew, though, that such thoughts were most likely born of his dejection that she had never tried to contact him again. He was just beating himself up over having driven her away, just feeling sorry for himself.

  For a time his desire to believe Jax’s story had been bolstered when he had spotted a popular science magazine in the store. On th
e cover had been a star field strewn with galaxies. The headline read “Our universe and multiplicity theory; maybe we’re not alone.”

  That night Alex sat in his quiet house and carefully read the series of articles revolving around the possibility of other universes beyond what was called the “Light Horizon,” the term used in Big Bang cosmology to describe the edge of the observable universe, the farthest distance astronomers could see. Since the light beyond the Light Horizon had not yet arrived to be seen, it was not known how large the universe actually was or what, if anything, might be beyond it.

  Astrophysicists speculated how the universe, made up of space, time, and matter, might be able to bend back on itself through wormholes so that the most distant parts of the universe would be but a step away. They went further to talk about how the universe itself might not be singular, not everything there was, and that there might be others out beyond. Through theories that touched on black holes, white holes, dark matter, dark energy, the nonlinear oddities of the space-time continuum, string theory and superstring theory which suggested as many as ten dimensions, it was hoped that physicists would eventually be able to come to understand if and how other universes existed beyond our own.

  Some astrophysicists postulated that the universe was like a bubble, and the events that created the bubble of the universe created others, a whole mass of them, each bubble a separate universe sparking into existence, growing, and expanding in a larger mass of universe bubbles. Other scientists believed that the universe was in fact like a sheet of time, space, and matter—four dimensions—floating in a greater void of a fifth dimension along with other universes, other four-dimensional sheets of time, matter, and space.

  These physicists believed that there were dimensions beyond the four familiar dimensions, and that these additional dimensions were membranes that when they touched threw matter into the four dimensions we know. In other words, created universes that floated in this fifth dimension.

  They even proposed that these other dimensions might be gateways between the universes.

  Alex couldn’t help wonder if Jax had come from one of those places. Perhaps she wasn’t so much from another world as she was from another universe and had traveled through a gateway of other dimensions. While it gave him chills to ponder the possibilities, he felt in his heart that it was nothing more than daydreaming, a mere hook upon which to hang his hope that she was real and that she had been telling him the truth.

  He needed her to be telling him the truth, or his entire impression of her, what he thought of her—her intelligence, her passion for life, her presence—would crumble. He didn’t want to believe she was from another world. How could he believe such a story?

  But if she was lying to him that would be worse.

  Alex felt trapped in that dilemma, not wanting to believe her story, yet not wanting her to end up being nothing more than a scheming con artist, a liar.

  But Jax was gone. He didn’t really have any reason to hope that she would return. Alex knew that he’d missed his chance to ever find out more, to ever solve the riddle.

  By the time he’d finished reading, it was dark in the house beyond the single lamp beside his chair. He felt not only alone but lonely in that enveloping darkness. The information in the articles hadn’t convinced him of anything, as he had hoped. In fact, in an odd way it only left him feeling more convinced of the impossibility of it all. It seemed to him that the physicists were seducing themselves into ever more grand, fantastical theories. The science, if it really was science and not the projection of wishes, was beyond him.

  As the rhythm of life demanded his attention he increasingly lost interest in the magazine articles. He had real life to deal with.

  A week after finally cremating his grandfather, Alex had gone back to painting. At first it had seemed like it was only something to do to try to fill the emptiness. The world felt so quiet, so dead, so sad. It had never seemed that way before. He had talked to Ben almost every day. In many ways it was Ben who had made the world all the more alive for him.

  As time wore on, Alex found that painting at least took his mind to other places, other worlds, and helped him forget his grief. He was alone most of the time, gone into those worlds that came to life on his canvases, and that suited him.

  He supposed that he could at least find some solace in the fact that Ben had led a full life. He had relished every day he’d had. That was more than most people ever did. A lot of people merely marked time until a holiday, until they could go on vacation, until they could retire, always waiting for their life to begin. Ben never waited. He had lived each day.

  After a few weeks, when Alex thought that maybe enough time had passed, he had called Mr. Martin to see if he would consider taking some paintings for the gallery. Mr. Martin was apologetic but said that he didn’t feel comfortable doing so. The man was insistent. Alex saw no point in pushing. It was the way it was.

  Rather than dwelling on the problem, Alex decided that he needed to find a solution, so he made the rounds of galleries where he thought he would feel comfortable showing his work. He finally managed to find one down in the old market district that agreed to take on a few smaller pieces. The shops were less expensive there, but they drew a variety of people and within a week the gallery had managed to sell a small painting for nine hundred dollars. The gallery had been pleased and asked Alex to bring in a few more paintings, one or two a little larger, so they could try to sell some of his more expensive work.

  Before the month was out Alex had also contacted Lancaster, Buckman, Fenton, the law firm in Boston, and asked if they could see to transferring the title to the land to his name. They assured him that they could handle it and in fact, according to the stipulations in the will, they were the only law firm legally allowed to handle anything to do with the land.

  It also turned out that there were hefty legal fees involved if he wanted to take title to the land, but considering the money he had from the six paintings that had been defaced at Mr. Martin’s gallery and the settlement check for his grandfather’s house due from the insurance company, Alex would have no problem handling the legal fees. The land would be his and the matter would be settled.

  He hadn’t yet decided if he wanted to sell the land, but he figured that he had the rest of his life to decide. Mr. Fenton from the law firm assured Alex that he could sell the land to the Daggett Trust at any point should he decide to do so. Alex asked if Mr. Fenton thought they could afford to pay fair market value for so much land. The man went out of his way to assure Alex that the Daggett Trust was well funded and would be able to handle such a purchase without any difficulty.

  If Alex died without ever deciding to sell, and if he had no heir, the land would revert to the conservation group without them having to pay a penny, so in a way it made sense to sell the land, because then the money would be his no matter what happened. But, on the other hand, if he died he wouldn’t be able to spend money from the grave.

  Mr. Fenton told him that the Daggett Trust had made inquiries, hoping for Alex’s decision on selling sooner rather than later. Something about it riled Alex and made him come to a decision. He asked Mr. Fenton to tell the people at the trust that he was taking title and had every intention of keeping the land. The lawyer had then gone to great lengths to make certain that Alex understood the restrictions to the deed, and that any violation would result in him losing the land, even after he had title. Alex had assured the man that he understood.

  Alex was looking forward to the transfer of title being completed. He wanted to spend some time alone in the woods painting. He was warming to the idea of such a vast place being his, of having a world to explore and call his own.

  As he sat in his studio listening to the rain beat against the window, he realized that after nearly a month he was finally starting to feel better, to get beyond his grief, to again find satisfaction in his work and at least a little quiet pleasure in life. He had a new gallery that wanted his work, and h
e was starting to think about a trip to Maine to begin to explore the wilderness and fill his mind with impressions to paint.

  It felt like things were getting back to normal. Things were moving forward. In a sense, it felt like a new beginning, like his life could at last really begin.

  Jax, as well, was becoming a distant—if haunting—memory. Whatever the real story with her was, she hadn’t made any attempt to contact him again. The more time that passed the more his hopes faded. If she was real, if her story was for real, she surely would have done something by now. She would have contacted him, sent a message . . . something.

  He couldn’t be sure that she hadn’t been involved in some scheme with people trying to con him. He didn’t think that was true, but the possibility existed and it troubled him.

  He’d seen no evidence of otherworldly people. In fact, he didn’t like to dwell on her revelations because the whole idea was seeming more absurd with each passing day and he didn’t like to think of Jax in such an unflattering light. He didn’t like to think of her as playing a part in a con game, but neither did he like to think of her being a wacko who imagined she was from a different planet. Having a mentally ill mother was more than enough craziness for Alex.

  In the end he didn’t know what to think, so he tried to put thoughts of Jax aside and devote himself to his painting.

  Outside, in the blackness, lightning ignited in staccato flashes, giving ghostly form to the glistening trees. When the wind blew and the lightning strobed and flickered, it made the branches seem to move in abrupt fits, almost as if the trees were staggering through the inky blackness. At times the rain pattering against the window became heavy, turning the soft sound to a low roar. As the night wore on, the rain at times came down in curtains that swept over the house as if trying to beat it down and wash it away.